This is a really important issue for me so I am hoping it is something that Toodledo can provide soon.

The Hotlist is a powerful feature but it relies solely on due dates and priority. If you follow GTD methodology and don't want to set 'soft' due dates for tasks (or priorities which are not really GTD) then you need another way to get a task into your Hotlist. The star field would be perfect for this.

I thought of making the Starred list my 'hotlist' but then absolutely everything must be manually added to build the Hotlist. I'd prefer to keep the automated functionality but still be able to manually add items when I need to.

In case anyone else is in the same boat (i.e. wanting to build your own Hotlist but with additional criteria such as 'starred' items), I've posted a message in the Tips & Tricks forum showing the criteria to use.

Jake - while this provides a workaround, search tabs lack item counts and of course you lose the auto-email of the Hotlist. So providing additional criteria to the Hotlist would be a valuable enhancement.

Please don't make "starred" a mandatory criteria for the Hotlist. That would totally ruin how I use the Hotlist and stars (the normal hotlist criteria is perfect for me - I just use the stars to set off the tasks that are on my boss's hot list).

I don't use priorities, so my hotlist is Overdue & Due Today. My Starred list is items that I flagged for doing today. As it stands, I have to remember to go to the Hotlist each day and manually star every item. Then I work from the Starred list throughout the day.

About the side issue on this topic of adding a count to the search items... I wouldn't like that because I have many saved searches and it would just clutter the display. If it were added, I'd like to see it as a separate option within "Show Tab Counts" so people like me could keep them off.

This is important to me too, and a custom search isn't a good alternative for me. I use the "Got To Do" widget to display my hotlist on the home screen of my phone. It can't display custom searches through its widget.